You have a point there. That said, the later uniforms remind me of some old British/English army uniforms with red tunics.
Finally 'Getting' TMP
- Thread starter DeepSpaceYorks
- Start date
You have a point there. That said, the later uniforms remind me of some old British/English army uniforms with red tunics.
It's not my favourite of the films (that would be Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country), I'd be lying if I said the pacing and production design didn't largely bother me, but I think any big Trek fan can at least appreciate it.
It's easily the most beautiful and cerebral of all the films and a truly great chapter in the Star Trek franchise. I don't love it, but I can respect the ambition. It's absolutely crazy for someone younger like me to think that this was a large-budget blockbuster back in 1979, that they could get away with this. It's flawed and perhaps never reached its full potential in the eyes of the director, but I don't think we'll ever see anything like it again.
It's easily the most beautiful and cerebral of all the films and a truly great chapter in the Star Trek franchise. I don't love it, but I can respect the ambition. It's absolutely crazy for someone younger like me to think that this was a large-budget blockbuster back in 1979, that they could get away with this. It's flawed and perhaps never reached its full potential in the eyes of the director, but I don't think we'll ever see anything like it again.
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I like them too, they seem like what a crew of a climate-controlled vessel would wear to conduct their day-to-day activities. Someone has posted photoshops using the TOS color scheme and they look about perfect (although, I actually don't mind what they used in 1979).
Oh, haha, you totally should read it. It's actually excellent in parts, but...
(and this is from memory, so if I get details wrong, I apologize)
- The prose is a bit amateur and stilted, mostly because Gene Roddenberry literally wrote the book himself, and he's a screenwriter, not a novelist. Descriptions kind of read like stage directions at times.
- Roddenberry imagined that all captains and flag officers have neural implants that can receive brain messages from Starfleet that appear like hallucinations. Seems problematic, and possibly a liability. Could you imagine Kirk on vacation, doing an orbital skydive, and suddenly all he sees are Klingon ships getting eaten by V'Ger? It's ridiculous.
- There's some odd and uncomfortable minor sexual content, which isn't in of itself a problem, but it's bizarre for Star Trek. There are quick descriptions of men feeling pressure "down there." Decker has sex with the Ilia probe. It's a bit out of nowhere. I suppose this is how Roddenberry wanted to make Trek all along. Ilia just comes off as a sexual Mary Sue of sorts, basically Roddenberry's fantasy sex goddess.
- Kirk basically tells his girlfriend to stop being a bitch, at least in his head. It's not in character.
- However, I love the Kirk-Spock interplay. The explanation that Kirk is Spock's th'y'la, which means friend, family, BFF, and in some cases (but not always), romantic entanglement along with Kirk's note about how a lot of people thought he and Spock were in a relationship because they were so close, and that he just prefers the company of women but never says exclusively so is kind of amazing and considered classic in many circles of Trek fandom. It also helped solidify the K/S thing popular in fan fiction.
On the topic of uniforms, I dig how functional they are, and that there's a wide variety of them, maybe for specific tasks, or maybe just for individual preference. I would absolutely like to wear one of those t-shirt uniforms in TMP than the big hot burgundy outfits, especially if engineering is partially on fire.
The TMP uniforms seemed to represent more of Roddenberry's vision: the idea that Starfleet has military structure but with a sense of individuality and peaceful intent. Don't get me wrong, I adore TWOK; it's like a military submarine movie in space, and probably the most solid film in the franchise. But it's not my ideal representation of the Trek universe.
The TMP uniforms seemed to represent more of Roddenberry's vision: the idea that Starfleet has military structure but with a sense of individuality and peaceful intent. Don't get me wrong, I adore TWOK; it's like a military submarine movie in space, and probably the most solid film in the franchise. But it's not my ideal representation of the Trek universe.
FYI, that's not what a "Mary Sue" is. A Mary Sue is basically an author's avatar in the story, who gets to meet iconic characters and do awesome things.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarySue
It's a very 'Star Trekky' Star Trek movie. If that makes sense. 
At the heart of the concept is a storyline that epitomises what Star Trek is all about: the unknown, the unexplained, seeking new life-forms and making peaceful contact..... people have long criticized it for not being a action-packed shoot 'em up like much of TOS was (let's be honest, for all it's philosophizing, TOS is well remembered for scenes of the characters either fighting or f***ing, to put it bluntly 
), but the reality is that TMP taps into Trek's more cerebral streak. Leonard Nimoy used to call TMP a 'tone poem', and I think that's actually to it's benefit. All these many years later it's a plus, a selling point, something which makes it stand out as something completely unique among the rest of TOS and the TOS movies. It's certainly not a bad thing.
The other thing I don't think it gets credit for is the character moments. People heap praise on the way The Wrath of Khan makes all the characters older and forces Kirk to face middle age/irrelevancy before discovering a fresh wind, but the truth is that TMP hit all of those story beats already, and did so with great maturity and deftness. Nobody ever seems to remember that.
At the heart of the concept is a storyline that epitomises what Star Trek is all about: the unknown, the unexplained, seeking new life-forms and making peaceful contact..... people have long criticized it for not being a action-packed shoot 'em up like much of TOS was (let's be honest, for all it's philosophizing, TOS is well remembered for scenes of the characters either fighting or f***ing, to put it bluntly ), but the reality is that TMP taps into Trek's more cerebral streak. Leonard Nimoy used to call TMP a 'tone poem', and I think that's actually to it's benefit. All these many years later it's a plus, a selling point, something which makes it stand out as something completely unique among the rest of TOS and the TOS movies. It's certainly not a bad thing.The other thing I don't think it gets credit for is the character moments. People heap praise on the way The Wrath of Khan makes all the characters older and forces Kirk to face middle age/irrelevancy before discovering a fresh wind, but the truth is that TMP hit all of those story beats already, and did so with great maturity and deftness. Nobody ever seems to remember that.
The other thing I don't think it gets credit for is the character moments. People heap praise on the way The Wrath of Khan makes all the characters older and forces Kirk to face middle age/irrelevancy before discovering a fresh wind, but the truth is that TMP hit all of those story beats already, and did so with great maturity and deftness. Nobody ever seems to remember that.
Totally agree - for me there's plenty of decent McCoy moments - 'I know engineers they love to change things' 'They do not' etc, the banter in the officers lounge, the argument in Kirks quarters 'What do you suggest we do - spank it?' the list goes on. The only person who seems 'off' is Spock and the plot clearly explains why this is so. Could the film have done with a touch more humour? Sure, but it's a fine line to walk, which the first three movies (especially TSFS) manage perfectly. I'd rather see the more serious tone of TMP than the dumb crap served up in TFF any day.
Right! My bad. I guess I was trying to say she just comes off as one-dimensional, but fans of the movie version are really no stranger to this. The book doesn't really improve anything, at least from what I remember.
I first saw 2001 in 1968 and TMP in 1979, and have seen each a number of times since, and never until the past year or two have I seen TMP referred to as comparable in any way to 2001. Nor had it ever occurred to me to make the comparison myself, because (and here I find myself agreeing with one of the advertising tag lines for TMP) "there is no comparison."
In defense of 2001, it had no "9 minutes of nothing but pretty colors" - there were frozen reaction shots of Bowman's eye(s) every so often.
[QUOTE="Lance, post: 11640308, member: 41485" people have long criticized it for not being a action-packed shoot 'em up like much of TOS was (let's be honest, for all it's philosophizing, TOS is well remembered for scenes of the characters either fighting or f***ing, to put it bluntly )[/QUOTE]At the risk of making a broad generalization, people who argue that are the same as those who argue Kelvin Trek isn't real Star Trek.
It suggest that (their ideal) "true" Star Trek is neither and really something in the middle, when it's really both.
)[/QUOTE]At the risk of making a broad generalization, people who argue that are the same as those who argue Kelvin Trek isn't real Star Trek. It suggest that (their ideal) "true" Star Trek is neither and really something in the middle, when it's really both.
That's not a bad thing. For all GR got wrong with TMP --like others have said --at least he did it...and did it his way. That sort of film can't ever be re-done in the contemporary marketplace. It didn't kill the franchise, and it's never going away. It's a piece of art at this point -an artifact of it's time --for better or worse.
For what it's worth, I think the Director's Edition is the only one I ever rewatch. It's only ever so slightly better, but that can mean a lot compared to some of the others.
And I'll echo what others have said about it being a shame. The movie had vision, if nothing else. It's like the first season TNG or last season TOS - there was stuff there that could have been brilliant. I wonder what, in some alternate universe, the second or third movie in a TMP-like series would have been like.
And I'll echo what others have said about it being a shame. The movie had vision, if nothing else. It's like the first season TNG or last season TOS - there was stuff there that could have been brilliant. I wonder what, in some alternate universe, the second or third movie in a TMP-like series would have been like.
One of my favourite cynical McCoy quotes
TMP is a kind of false start isn't it? They effectively reboot the series in the next movie it seems to me. It stands on it's own, which I think suits it very well. However, I would have been interested in more thoughtful movies but I don't think the general viewing public would have got off on metaphysical ruminations set on varying different sets of planes of existence for much longer than, ooh lets say, one film!
Agree, for me it is like that too. Although I watch all Kirk era: TOS, TAS, TMP, WOK, SFS, TVH, TFF, TUC, GEN[opening 1701-B scenes] and as you do the J.J. Abrams films.
One wonders if anyone gave any serious thought to there being a followup while they were making TMP. Did GR, perhaps, wonder if it could be the springboard to getting Trek back on television?
Well, it did in a long about way.
What bothers me about what followed is they seemed to throw everything away afterward rather than pick up the threads left at the end of TMP. I could see them rethinking the uniforms, but those awful maroons of TWOK-TUC were completely wrong minded and at odds with the overall depiction of Starfleet.
The biggest change was the rest button of having Kirk once again desk bound, the Enterprise a training vessel and the main crew stuck at the Academy.
It was only three years later. Why not have the crew in the midst of their second 5-year mission and go from there? Much of the same story in TWOK could have been told. And hopefully with better looking uniforms.
Trek on film faced the same issues any long running film franchise faces: time. Actors age and yet the characters are supposed to remain basically the same age. But the suspension of dusbelief is strained when subsequent films of a franchise are released every two or three years.
For Trek it's quite noticeable particularly between TWOK-TFF. That was aomething of an arc that in universe covered less than a year's time. Most likely only a few months. Yet there were seven years between TWOK and TFF where the cast aged noticeably. TUC followed only two years later even though about a decade (give or take) had passed in universe and the cast looked appropriately aged.
TMP might have made a bit more sense if they had gone with Robert Wise's initial assumption that several years had passed since the original 5-year mission to account for the cast's appearance and the drastic change in how the Trek universe looked. Note that no real effort was made to hide the cast's age (much to Grace Lee Whitney's disappointment).
It's all long over and done with, but it's interesting to ponder a different road they might have taken.
Well, it did in a long about way.
What bothers me about what followed is they seemed to throw everything away afterward rather than pick up the threads left at the end of TMP. I could see them rethinking the uniforms, but those awful maroons of TWOK-TUC were completely wrong minded and at odds with the overall depiction of Starfleet.
The biggest change was the rest button of having Kirk once again desk bound, the Enterprise a training vessel and the main crew stuck at the Academy.
It was only three years later. Why not have the crew in the midst of their second 5-year mission and go from there? Much of the same story in TWOK could have been told. And hopefully with better looking uniforms.
Trek on film faced the same issues any long running film franchise faces: time. Actors age and yet the characters are supposed to remain basically the same age. But the suspension of dusbelief is strained when subsequent films of a franchise are released every two or three years.
For Trek it's quite noticeable particularly between TWOK-TFF. That was aomething of an arc that in universe covered less than a year's time. Most likely only a few months. Yet there were seven years between TWOK and TFF where the cast aged noticeably. TUC followed only two years later even though about a decade (give or take) had passed in universe and the cast looked appropriately aged.
TMP might have made a bit more sense if they had gone with Robert Wise's initial assumption that several years had passed since the original 5-year mission to account for the cast's appearance and the drastic change in how the Trek universe looked. Note that no real effort was made to hide the cast's age (much to Grace Lee Whitney's disappointment).
It's all long over and done with, but it's interesting to ponder a different road they might have taken.
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